Photography by Bob Montanaro

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Citrus Breakdown

Abandoned Packing House | St. Lucie County | Florida

Passing always during daylight hours, the hope was the light out front would be working to capture the scene with its ambient lighting. Arriving at the abandoned citrus packing house at nighttime found it to be in total darkness. A spooky realization for such a dark and lonely stretch of road. Rather than some elaborate setup with off-axis flash units and tripods, etc., the idea sank in to leave there as quickly as possible. Hence the use of a flash on the hotshoe for a straight on shot to capture the disrepair, the fluorescent light fixture dangling, the rusting metal, the fading paint of the mural, all as quickly as possible. Like a corpse in the unyielding light of the morgue, the flash brings out all the blemishes for nighttime review.